Word: passacaglias
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...from an unsuccessful ballet which Hindemith began in 1919 on a commission from Diaghilev. The ballet lay unfinished after the death of Diaghilev until Hindemith completed it with Massine in 1937; the ballet failed a year later. The three movements of the present are all typified by the concluding Passacaglia, which consists of nineteen variations on a six-measure theme. Here Hindemith blurs the distinction between economy of musical material and paucity of thought; loud brass saying the same thing a dozen or so times hardly titillates the sensibilities...
Even now, their collaboration was strictly limited. Using mostly her own company and appearing herself in the leading role, Choreographer Graham presented the last struggles of Mary Queen of Scots to Webern's expansive Passacaglia, Opus i, Six Pieces, Opus 6. The work detailed Mary's discard of the symbols of statecraft, her hopeless duel with Elizabeth, her course to death on the scaffold. Brilliantly costumed, the work had some stunning theatrical effects: the sudden revelation of Elizabeth in shimmering gold gown as her high-backed throne turns slowly to the audience, the ritualistic tennis game played with...
...wonder of this sordid and symbolic tale is that it is suffused with compassion, heightened by the remarkable music Alban Berg wrote for it. The score, set in the tilted frame of nontonality, is carefully cast in a variety of classical musical forms: suite, passacaglia, sonata, fanatasie and fugue; scherzo, etc. The huge (113 instruments) orchestra sometimes bellows in brassy rages, sometimes shrieks in lines of shrill angularity, sometimes surprises with passages of softly breathing lyricism. The stark horror of the murder is conveyed in a howling, brassy crescendo in the orchestra that gives way abruptly to the tinselly tinkle...
Fire & Ice. When short, balding Conductor Ormandy stepped before the Orchestra Hall audience, he had only two rehearsals under his belt. He had decided on a "good box office" program of standards: Bach's C Minor Passacaglia and Fugue, Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, Brahms's Symphony...
Schuman, who is now head of Juilliard Music School, has here written one of the best of modern symphonies. The work is built on a recurring chordal scheme, much like a gigantic passacaglia. The music does not surrender itself completely on a single hearing, but is well worth repeated listenings. The harmonies are rocky, the rhythms complex, but the orchestration is clean-cut and the symphony is beautifully paced. Ormandy and the Philadelphia give it a vigorous reading, and the recording is fine...